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The argument that says the UKIP represents a rebellion against the political elite seems true (aside from its public school-educated/banker/professional politician leader), but even that lends it a sophistication it barely deserves. UKIP is the road rage of a repressed parochialism; the collective panic attack of an introspective minority that has watched a succession of socially and economically liberal governments and their co-religionists in the media promote a world-view that seemed to leave these “outsiders” further and further in the margins.

The margins of culture, that is. Not the margins of the economy. One suspects many of UKIP’s leading figures are businessmen and women who have done rather well out of the post-Thatcher economic consensus. Conversely, UKIP supporters from poorer parts of society are not disadvantaged because of EU red tape, immigration or tolerance towards gays, but because they live in a low-skill, wildly free market economy that has been propagated by every government – to a greater or lesser extent – since 1979, creating an entrenched inequality that is worsening every year.